But Brecqhou always cut the view on one side or the other, whereas now, for the first time, I saw the whole western side of the Island at a glance, and, boy as I was, it impressed me deeply and made me swell with pride.

For, you see, thanks to my grandfather and my mother and Krok, my eyes were opening, even then, to the wonders and beauties among which I lived.
I turned at last and tramped through the heather and ferns and the breast-high golden-rod, stumbling among the rabbit holes with which the ground was riddled, towards the house which stood in a hollow in the centre of the Island.

And I stared hard at it, for I had never seen the like before.
It was not like our Sercq houses, granite-built, thick-walled, low in the sides and high in the roof.

It stood facing Sercq--that is, with its back to the south and west--and the far end of it seemed to start out of the ground and come sloping up to the front, till, above the doorway, it was perhaps ten feet high.

As a matter of fact cunning advantage had been taken of a dip in the ground, and the house, built against the inside of the hollow and sloping very gradually upwards, left nothing for the wild winter gales from the south-west to lay hold of.